Starmer ‘to weigh up his future as PM this weekend’ after ministers tell him to step down – latest

John Hutton, who served in both Blair and Brown’s cabinets, told The Independent there “shouldn’t be a coronation”.

Lord Hutton said ”we need to know what any new leader is actually going to do. Governing from within our own comfort zone would be a disaster – there are hard choices and no easy path to stronger economic growth, better defence, welfare reforms and curbing illegal immigration.”

But he said any contest “can’t drag on” and it was “better to get it over with”.

“Changing leader will probably prove to be the easy bit,” he added. “Governing more effectively – well, that is going to be just as hard as Keir Starmer found it.”

A statement win in Makerfield has given Andy Burnham a chance to take on Sir Keir Starmer and become prime minister. What do voters now expect from their new MP? Dan Haygarth finds out:

It’s a sunny Friday morning in Ashton-in-Makerfield, a market town four miles south of Wigan which has spent the past month as the unlikely epicentre of British politics.

This town’s constituency, Makerfield, sent a decisive political message overnight which means that Mr Miller is likely correct – in many ways.

“We really feared that if Andy Burnham hadn’t won yesterday, then the Labour Party would have gone into meltdown”, the retired health worker adds.

“And that would have just fed into Reform.”

The prime minister said he had not yet directly spoken with Mr Burnham since his victory, but added that he will, and had already sent a message of congratulations to him.

In a lunchtime call with Labour staffers, he called for the party to “pull together” in taking the fight to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and warned against “turning on each other”.

Sir Keir Starmer said: “The one thing we’ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement.

“That has never worked. That’s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.”

Sir Keir is understood to have amassed a war chest to fund his campaign to fight any leadership challenge with the backing of a group of private donors, as first reported by The Times.

Fundraising has ramped up in the last two days with total pledges running into six figures, sources said.

Labour MPs are clamouring for a coronation of Andy Burnham as prime minister, after his stunning victory in the Makerfield by-election, to prevent a drawn-out leadership battle that could crush the party’s general election hopes.

But a defiant Keir Starmer has refused to step down and made it clear he will fight any leadership contest, calling on the party “to pull together” and “avoid plunging the country into chaos”.

Our Whitehall editor Kate Devlin reports:

• YouGov snap polling shows that if a contest is triggered, 38 per cent want Starmer to stand down and not take part, but 36 per cent think the prime minister should run himself
• 23 per cent of Britons think Burnham would be a better prime minister than Starmer
• 32 per cent anticipate that if Burnham were to become prime minister it would be a change from Starmer, while 43 per don’t think there would be much difference

Heidi Alexander, the Secretary of State for Transport is understood to have been the first to tell the prime minister to go.

Cabinet members, including Yvette Cooper, Ed Miliband and Shabana Mahmood are also said to be preparing to repeat their earlier demands that he do so, in the wake of Mr Burnham’s victory.

The prime minister said he had not yet directly spoken with Mr Burnham since his victory, but added that he will, and had already sent a message of congratulations to him.

In a lunchtime call with Labour staffers, he called for the party to “pull together” in taking the fight to Nigel Farage’s Reform UK and warned against “turning on each other”.

Sir Keir Starmer said: “The one thing we’ve got to avoid doing is plunging our party and our country into chaos by turning on each other and tearing apart our party and our movement.

“That has never worked. That’s what the last government did. We need to learn that lesson.”

Sir Keir is understood to have amassed a war chest to fund his campaign to fight any leadership challenge with the backing of a group of private donors, as first reported by The Times.

Fundraising has ramped up in the last two days with total pledges running into six figures, sources said.

Political editor David Maddox explains why the crushing by-election defeat shows that the Reform bubble has burst:

While the by-election itself will not be the reason for the demise of Reform’s hopes, it has shone a spotlight on the idea that the party could march into Downing Street as somehow being inevitable.

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We’ve all seen politicians say they plan to do one thing, and ultimately be incapable or unwilling to make it happen – so it remains to be seen if Mr Burnham in No 10 would be able to replicate the success he has seen as mayor of Greater Manchester.

But, based on what he has previously said on the economy, The Independent takes a look at how your pocket might be impacted in the event of a change in leadership.

Business and Money editor Karl Matchett reports:

We congratulate the former Manchester mayor on a historic by-election victory that has re-energised Labour and reminded it to take the fight to Reform – but the keys to No 10 cannot be handed to him without a sterner test of his credentials

The Edge Green Street ground of Ashton Town Football Club might not seem the obvious place in which to spark a revolution, but it was carefully chosen by Andy Burnham as the location for his Makerfield by-election victory speech.

With the winning candidate dressed down in polo shirt and slacks, in a grassroots sort of venue, the “optics” of it all underlined his status as tribune of the people. The prime minister, we may note, is rarely seen without a suit and tie, and has struggled to shake off his reputation as a habitue of the VIP box at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium.